{"id":37701,"date":"2018-01-10T22:04:49","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T04:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=37701"},"modified":"2018-09-18T22:18:26","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T04:18:26","slug":"mormon-encounters-with-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/mormon-encounters-with-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Mormon Encounters with Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<section class=\"entry\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-10-at-9.03.28-AM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-45036\" src=\"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-10-at-9.03.28-AM-319x500.png\"  alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"235\" \/><\/a>Moth &amp; Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death<\/em>, put together by\u00a0<em>Sunstone\u00a0<\/em>editor Stephen Carter, contains 46\u00a0chapters that range from as short as one page to as many as 20. There\u2019s poetry, fiction, memoir, sermon, meditation, drama, prose poem, and illustration. The tone modulates through humorous, to mournful, to sentimental, to harrowing. The volume is gathered into the following five sections: \u201cPassages\u201d (the older generation, mostly), \u201cPiercing the Veil\u201d (post-mortality), \u201cFleeting\u201d (children), \u201cA Wider View\u201d (other deaths\u2014animals, etc.), \u201cA Single Soul\u201d (subjective experience).<\/p>\n<p>In an attempt to give each author their due, here are all of them, each with a brief description of theme (with the ones in bold commented on further below):<\/p>\n<div class=\"content-column one_half\">\n<ul>\n<li>Jennifer Quist: Jesus, Relief Society<\/li>\n<li>Paul Malan: father on a mission<\/li>\n<li><strong>Richard Dutcher: grandma\u2019s veins<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Anita Tanner: Prometheus\u2019 liver<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>L. Hadley: abusive grandmother<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>John Hatch: mother, keepsake<\/li>\n<li>Shayne Bell: orphan<\/li>\n<li>Jack Harrell: mother, homage<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mei Li Inouye: destinations<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Emily Belanger: Nana, asthma<\/li>\n<li>Neil Aitken: father, phone call<\/li>\n<li>Lisa Torcasso Downing: brother<\/li>\n<li>Gary James Bergera: parents<\/li>\n<li>Devery S. Anderson: Ward Cleaver<\/li>\n<li>Angela Hallstrom: heavenly mothers<\/li>\n<li>Thomas Kimball: visitations<\/li>\n<li><strong>English Brooks: D&amp;C 129<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Johnny Townsend: gay dying, belief<\/li>\n<li><strong>Philip McLemore: the Big Porch<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Luisa Perkins: haunted<\/li>\n<li><strong>Nicole Goldberg: miscarriage<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Kathryn Lynard: abortion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Doug Gibson: an infant dies<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"content-column one_half last_column\">\n<ul>\n<li>Phyllis Barber: son, bleeding out<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rachel Mabey Whipple: drowning<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Fatimah Salleh: Black American<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Darlene Young: son, organ donor<\/li>\n<li><strong>Steven L. Peck: what can die?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Brian H. Stuy: bears, baby bison<\/li>\n<li><strong>Larry Menlove: murder<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Patricia Karamesines: bees<\/li>\n<li>Sarah Blackham Dunster: hen<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jonathan Penny: future history<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Eric Samuelson: Eve<\/li>\n<li>Eugene England: trains<\/li>\n<li><strong>Javen Tanner: goat apple blood<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Adam S. Miller: vampires<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Boyd J. Peterson: \u201965 Fairlane<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Heidi Naylor: Ogden, WWII<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Dallas Robbins: illness, meditation<\/li>\n<li>Bengt Washburn: driving, ghosts<\/li>\n<li>David G. Pace: Jack Flanagan<\/li>\n<li>Elouise Bell: bucket lists<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jerilyn Pool: child flipping birds<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Stephen Carter: reflections<\/li>\n<li>Dana Haight Cattani: exegesis<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"clear_column\"><\/div>\n<p>The most jolting chapter was Lynard\u2019s, following on the heels of Goldberg. No rape, no incest, no life-threatened mother: just one time without protection. \u201cI had forgotten it was a regular day.\u201d Dutcher convinced me to never eat ham at a funeral again, and Anita Tanner reminded me to never get cancer.<\/p>\n<p>Things do lighten up. To my mind, the most imaginative chapter is Jonathan Penny\u2019s: an excerpt from a post-apocalyptic history of the LDS Church written in 2087. It\u2019s also the most hopeful in many ways, what with names like Mbeke and Vitelli for apostles, and nothing would make me happier than (if I had to, that is) enjoying the plague alongside this congenial writer. Steven Peck\u2019s is another gem. By asking what can die, he persuades me the question isn\u2019t simple. Like, a house can\u2019t, but a home can, and his iPod case can\u2019t, but the iPod can. Battle Creek can die twice. And music, \u00e0 la Don McLean\u2019s \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d (\u201cdrinking whiskey and rye\u201d). The wind, my love, a battery. The universe. Peck almost grows dreary but remembers, \u201cHere in my garden, I can look upon a world cast in light. . . . I am content to know that all of this around me has happened and is happening now on this vibrant blue island thriving joyously in a waning universe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Adam Miller did have vampires in the conference version of his talk, which he delivered at the Claremont Mormon Studies Conference a few years back, but, sadly, they don\u2019t make it in the book. No matter. When I experience Miller\u2019s words through the page, I get the sensation of overhearing an ancient priest in strange cloth telling me a truth I\u2019ll never understand, but want to. \u201cYou must yourself become a ghost.\u201d (All right, Adam, I\u2019ll try). The hardest paragraph for me to read was the opening to Rachel Mabey Whipple\u2019s chapter:<\/p>\n<p>Many years ago our one-year-old daughter slipped into our garden koi pond while we were weeding. I noticed I hadn\u2019t heard from her for a while and asked Clint to check. When he pulled her out, she was limp and unconscious, not breathing, her skin and clothes the same dull grey, covered with bits of plants and pond scum.<\/p>\n<p>It is awful to remember.<\/p>\n<p>With horrified fascination I reread those words a dozen times before being able to proceed. I\u2019m still shaken, despite the happy ending. Likewise, the gratuitous violence against animals makes me fear what I\u2019ve done to them over the years, and Larry Menlove impresses that emotion the strongest. He calls it murder, killing farm animals the way he did. And some would agree. That word\u00a0<em>murder<\/em>, however, made me realize that for a book about death, there were no chapters about homicide, manslaughter, or war\u2014not that we want these things but that they matter. Maybe I should thank the editor for that, but another part of me wants to hear and feel what those Mormons go through.<\/p>\n<p>Boyd Peterson\u2019s chapter was fun, and Philip McLemore\u2019s delightful. Jerilyn Pool and Mei Li Inouye both made me go \u201c<em>Ha!,<\/em>\u201d L. Hadley and Fatimah Salleh filled me with rage, helplessness, hope, and confusion, but I won\u2019t risk spoiling either through paraphrase. Then there\u2019s English Brooks, who cuts past the mumbo-jumbo and elicits with curious drawings some element of the genuine wizard in Mormonism\u2019s founding prophet Joseph Smith.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond Penny\u2019s, by far the most artful piece I found was Heidi Naylor\u2019s. I had to send an email after, just to thank her for finding a way to put phonemes in that order. Easily the most musical piece of prose I\u2019ve read in some time, and difficult to sustain, but she does for a half dozen pages. One excerpt:<\/p>\n<p>The war was all but over, everybody said. Who failed to inform Luxembourg? The Germans drove hard and the 109th held fast, only to lose four of every five men who wore the Keystone patch. Bloody bucket men. Charley Mougham checked out at Clerf castle in the fire, went down shooting. Lieutenant Welland had either seen it or been told, he couldn\u2019t say for sure. . . . The remains of the 109th and the 110th, which had fared even worse, got sent home. Damn lucky to make it out. Everybody said.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll close out with lines from Javen Tanner. But first, I\u2019ll opine that we shall always honor Sam Brown for his book on Mormonism and death,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/samuelbrown.net\/in-heaven\/\"><em>In Heaven As It Is On Earth<\/em><\/a>, but\u00a0<em>Moth &amp; Rust<\/em>, for most people anyway, will be easier to love. Carter deserves our gratitude, as do the other 45\u00a0contributors\u2014a logistical feat. Death won\u2019t give up, and it\u2019s tempting to grow hardened or ironic toward it, but when people die, we need to feel it. And this collection helps with exactly that. Now, Javen Tanner:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">I sat in Sheep Meadow and watched a particle<br \/>\nof my blood float away in the belly of an insect.<br \/>\nI asked, \u201cIf you could have anyone<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">dig your grave, who would it be?\u201d \u201cOh,<br \/>\nI love this game,\u201d squealed my son. \u201cLet\u2019s see,<br \/>\nA good gravedigger must have a vacant look.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">\u201cHis eyes must be empty and clean,\u201d agreed my wife,<br \/>\n\u201cand he must answer \u2018yes\u2019 to all philosophical questions.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cTrue!\u201d added my daughter, \u201cAnd, most of all,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">he must interrupt the instructions of weeping mothers<br \/>\nto say, \u2018Lady, I do this for a living.\u2019\u201d \u201cIn spades,\u201d<br \/>\nI laughed. And with that, we gathered the blankets<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">and the rubber ball. As we arrived at Columbus Circle,<br \/>\na goat was hit by a yellow cab. Instead of blood,<br \/>\nred delicious apples scattered everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\nMoth and Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death<br \/>\n<\/em>ed. Stephen Carter<br \/>\n(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2017)<br \/>\nPaperback<br \/>\n$23.95<\/p>\n<div class=\"t pg-1m0 pg-1x1 pg-1h3 pg-1y9 pg-1ff2 pg-1fs0 pg-1fc0 pg-1sc0 pg-1ls0 pg-1ws0\"><em>A Book Launch of\u00a0<\/em><span class=\"pg-1ff1\">Moth and Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death<\/span><em>\u00a0is\u00a0<strong>today<\/strong>, Jan. 10, at The King\u2019s English Bookshop Salt Lake City, 7:00 p.m.. Select contributors to the book will be reading, including Editor Stephen Carter, Phyllis Barber, Devery S. Anderson, Steven L. Peck and 15 Bytes Literary Editor David G. Pace.<\/em><\/div>\n<div class=\"saboxplugin-wrap\"><\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moth &amp; Rust: Mormon Encounters with Death, put together by\u00a0Sunstone\u00a0editor Stephen Carter, contains 46\u00a0chapters that range from as short as one page to as many as 20. There\u2019s poetry, fiction, memoir, sermon, meditation, drama, prose poem, and illustration. The tone modulates through humorous, to mournful, to sentimental, to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2589,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews-literary-arts","category-literary-arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-10-at-9.03.28-AM-319x500.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 12:31:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37704,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37701\/revisions\/37704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}